The Lost Metal Review – Wax and Wayne Step Onto The Cosmere Main Stage
Mistborn: The Lost Metal is the fourth and final Wax and Wayne book, the seventh Mistborn novel over all, and the point where Scadrial stops flirting with the wider Cosmere and just walks in, grabs a chair, and sits at the big table. Published in November 2022 at around 500+ pages depending on edition, it closes out Mistborn Era 2 while pointing hard toward what comes next for the series.
I went in aware that this book divided readers. Some loved the huge Cosmere swings, others felt the story “lost the plot” and wandered too far from the scrappy lawman adventures that started in The Alloy of Law. For me, The Lost Metal worked incredibly well as a finale. It is bigger, stranger, and more “crossover heavy” than anything Wax and Wayne have faced before, but it feels like the natural payoff of four books’ worth of setup.
I also have a confession. Looking back on the full series, I like Wayne more than Wax. I know, I know. I can already hear the comments about him being “one-note” or “just comic relief.” Yet his arc here hit me with more force than anyone else’s, and I still think about his ending months later.
If you somehow landed on this review before reading the rest of Era 2, I strongly suggest starting with my earlier pieces on The Alloy of Law, Shadows of Self, and The Bands of Mourning, and pairing all of that with my review of the novella Mistborn: Secret History. This book sits right at the intersection of all those threads.
Is The Lost Metal Worth Reading For Wax And Wayne Fans?
If you are already invested in Wax, Wayne, Marasi, and Steris, and you are happy for Mistborn to lean fully into its shared-universe side, then yes, The Lost Metal is absolutely worth your time. It finishes the Set storyline, pays off key character arcs, and turns Scadrial into a central player in the wider Cosmere struggle.
If you want a short answer for search results:
Quick answer: The Lost Metal is a high-stakes, Cosmere-heavy finale that is best read after all previous Mistborn books, including Mistborn: Secret History. It delivers a powerful ending for Wax and Wayne, though it leans more into global and cosmic threats than tidy detective work in Elendel.
I would recommend the novel on its own and Mistborn Era 2 as a whole. Is Era 2 “better” than Era 1? I still have a huge emotional soft spot for Vin and crew, so my heart screams one thing while my brain quietly points to the growth in craft here. Sanderson’s writing, pacing, and long-term planning feel sharper in Era 2, and The Lost Metal is a big part of that.
Affiliate Disclaimer: This article may contain affiliate links to the discussed products or services, for which - through no additional cost to you - we may receive a small commission. For more details please check our Disclaimer page.
Recommended for: readers who already care about Wax, Wayne, Marasi, and Steris, and who are happy for Mistborn to plug into the larger Cosmere story.
Best reading path: Mistborn Era 1, then The Alloy of Law, Shadows of Self, The Bands of Mourning, Mistborn: Secret History, then The Lost Metal.
Where The Lost Metal Fits In Mistborn And The Cosmere
Before we talk about feelings, let’s orient ourselves.
Mistborn is split into eras. Era 1 is the original trilogy: The Final Empire, The Well of Ascension, The Hero of Ages. Era 2, often called the Wax and Wayne series, jumps forward about 300 years and follows lawman-turned-noble Waxillium Ladrian in a city that has railways, guns, and electricity alongside Allomancy and Feruchemy. Era 2 consists of four books: The Alloy of Law, Shadows of Self, The Bands of Mourning, and finally The Lost Metal.
The Lost Metal is:
Wax and Wayne #4
Mistborn novel #7
Set roughly six years after The Bands of Mourning, once Wax has traded most of his gunslinger lifestyle for politics and family, while Wayne and Marasi remain on the front lines of law enforcement.
This book is also the first time Mistborn truly feels like it is standing shoulder to shoulder with series like Stormlight Archive inside the Cosmere. Plot threads from Mistborn: Secret History and from other planets finally collide with the more “grounded” Wax and Wayne story.
Recommended Reading Order Before The Lost Metal
Could you jump straight into The Lost Metal after a hazy memory of Era 1 and maybe The Alloy of Law? You could physically do that. I would not advise it.
For the best experience:
Mistborn Era 1 trilogy
Get the original story of Vin, Kelsier, Sazed, and the end of the Final Empire.Mistborn Era 2 so far
Mistborn: Secret History
This novella is not optional if you care about the Cosmere side of the plot. Key reveals in The Lost Metal lean heavily on it.Then read The Lost Metal
If you have already read Era 1 long ago, the reviews on His and Hers for the Wax and Wayne books and Secret History can work as a quick refresh before you finally tackle the finale.
- Mistborn Era 1 trilogy – start with The Final Empire.
- Mistborn Era 2: The Alloy of Law, Shadows of Self, The Bands of Mourning.
- Mistborn: Secret History – the bridge between Era 1 and Era 2.
- The Lost Metal (Wax and Wayne #4, Mistborn #7).
Spoiler-Light Review – From Elendel Politics To Planet-Sized Problems
In The Lost Metal we pick up six years after the treasure hunt of The Bands of Mourning. Wax is now a senator and a father, trying to fight for the common folk in committee rooms instead of dusty streets. Steris is fully integrated into both his life and his work, lists and risk plans and all. Wayne and Marasi, on the other hand, have become a formal constabulary team, chasing kidnappers, smugglers, and the remnants of the Set through the guts of the city.
The Set has not been idle. Allomancers are still vanishing. Strange technology moves through hidden tunnels beneath Elendel. A terrifying new weapon enters play, backed by the influence of a hostile god who is not content with a single city, or even a single continent.
The tone here pulls together everything Era 2 has done so far:
The Alloy of Law gave us fun “gunslingers in the city” energy.
Shadows of Self leaned into murder mystery and theology.
The Bands of Mourning turned into an adventure story with skyships and ancient relics.
The Lost Metal feels like a political thriller colliding with a magic-rich disaster movie, wrapped inside a Cosmere crossover.
It is faster and louder than the earlier Wax and Wayne books. The banter is still there, especially whenever Wayne opens his mouth, but the stakes feel heavier. Sanderson clearly knows he is closing a chapter of the series here, and it shows in how quickly things escalate.
Set six years after The Bands of Mourning, The Lost Metal follows Wax, Wayne, Marasi, and Steris as they race to stop the Set from unleashing a god-fueled bomb on Elendel while a hostile Shard closes in on Scadrial. It finishes the Wax and Wayne story and pushes Mistborn onto the wider Cosmere stage.
The Wax And Wayne Of It All – Characters Taking Their Final Bows
For all the bombastic Cosmere fireworks, the reason this book hits as hard as it does has more to do with four people than with gods and worldhoppers: Wax, Wayne, Marasi, and Steris.
Wayne – From “One Trick Pony” To Emotional Center
Let’s start with the most divisive member of the crew.
Wayne has always been a bundle of chaos. Bad hats, worse accents, endless bartering, and a sense of humor that often lands right before a fight or right after a trauma. A lot of readers bounced off him early in the series. I have seen every variation of “he’s just comic relief” and “he is the same joke every time.”
In The Lost Metal, those traits are still there, but they sit on top of something raw and heavy. Across all four books, Wayne has been quietly stewing in guilt over the mistakes of his past. Here, that guilt and his response to it finally come into focus. His bond with Marasi grows into a partnership where he can be both capable and vulnerable, and his relationship with Wax reaches a point where you can feel how much history they share even when they are barely speaking.
Without getting into precise spoiler details in this section, I will say this: Wayne’s final choices reframe his earlier behavior in a way that made me re-evaluate the entire series. He went from “the funny one I enjoy” to “the character who will probably stick with me the longest.”
I know some readers still think of Wayne as “just the comic relief.” For me, The Lost Metal is where his guilt, loyalty, and stubborn kindness turn him into the beating heart of Wax and Wayne – and the character who stayed with me the longest.
Wax, Steris, And The Cost Of Being Harmony’s Sword
By this point in the series, Wax is no longer just the Roughs lawman with a badge and a pair of guns. He is a senator, a husband, a father, and still the person Harmony nudges when the world tilts toward disaster. The Lost Metal leans into that tug-of-war between “normal” life and god-sponsored heroics.
There is less room for Wax to grow here than in the earlier books, yet his choices matter more. He has to decide when to trust Harmony, when to defy him, and how far he is willing to go when the stakes involve not just his city but his planet.
Steris, meanwhile, remains one of the quiet standouts of Era 2 for me. Starting in The Bands of Mourning, she shifted from punchline to partner, and The Lost Metal continues that trend. Her ability to plan for disasters is not treated as a quirk. It is the reason certain scenes work at all. She is still awkward, still very much herself, and still absolutely essential.
Marasi Steps Out Of The Background
Marasi has always had potential. She just kept getting overshadowed by larger personalities and louder story beats. Here she finally steps into a clear, central role.
As a legal mind and as a Pulser, she sits right at the intersection of law, politics, and magic. Her storyline in The Lost Metal deals with shadowy allies, hard choices about who she serves, and what it means to fight not only for one city, but for an entire world full of people who will never know her name. Several reviewers singled out her growth in this volume, and I agree with them.
By the end of the book, I felt that Wayne and Marasi, more than anyone else, were the ones carrying the second half of Era 2 on their shoulders.
Did The Lost Metal “Lose The Plot”?
Time to address the big complaint.
Some readers felt that The Lost Metal shifted so hard into Cosmere territory that it stopped being a Wax and Wayne story and turned into a crossover event that happened to include them. Some reviews, for instance, praise the early sections then describes a major newcomer-god twist as the point where the book started to feel “un-Sanderson” for them.
Others loved the way the book ties Mistborn more tightly to Sanderson’s other series, calling it an explosive and spectacular conclusion that leans into cross-series connections on purpose.
Where do I land? Squarely in the “this is exactly what he has been building toward” camp.
From Shadows of Self onward, we have been watching Harmony struggle with his own limits as a god, watching the Set worship something called Trell, and watching offworld forces begin to poke at Scadrial. Mistborn: Secret History already pulled the curtain back on Kelsier, the nature of the beyond, and the way shards interact. It would have felt odd to have all of that simmering in the background forever.
Is the tonal jump noticeable? Yes. Near the end, The Lost Metal feels far closer to an Avengers-style event story than to a tidy detective case in Elendel. I can understand why that jars some people. For me, though, it lands as the payoff to a decade of hints.
If you only care about Elendel politics and the lives of this one crew, the book still gives you closure. The Set storyline is resolved. Wax’s place in the city changes. Marasi’s career and ideals reach a clear turning point. Steris continues to thrive. Wayne gets the arc he deserves, and I say that with full knowledge of the emotional damage that sentence carries.
Cosmere Connections – How The Lost Metal Changes The Bigger Picture
From a Cosmere perspective, The Lost Metal is a milestone.
From Mistborn: Secret History To Scadrial’s “We Are Not Alone” Moment
In my review of Mistborn: Secret History, I talked about how that novella quietly rewires everything we thought we knew about Kelsier and about what happens to people after they die. It also showed us that the powers behind Mistborn are not isolated. They are part of a much larger struggle across worlds.
The Lost Metal takes that framework and moves it from “secret backstage lore” into “front and center plot.” Harmony is dealing with a rival shard, Autonomy, whose avatar has empowered Telsin and the Set. That conflict shapes both the giant bomb threat and the broader pressure on Scadrial.
Ghostbloods, Autonomy, And The War Behind The War
The book also brings the Ghostbloods into Wax and Wayne’s story in a very direct way. Readers of Stormlight Archive will already know that name. For everyone else, they are a secretive group with their own goals, some of which involve protecting planets like Scadrial from outside interference.
Characters tied to the Ghostbloods help Marasi deal with Autonomy’s agents. Worldhopping magic users show up with strange abilities that clearly come from other planets. There are nods to Elantris, The Emperor’s Soul, and Stormlight, though you do not need encyclopedic knowledge of those books to follow the main story. Reviewers have described The Lost Metal as “half Mistborn, half Cosmere crossover,” and that feels accurate.
If you enjoy spotting Easter eggs, this book is basically a candy store. If you prefer a focused, contained cast, you may find some of these appearances distracting, so your mileage may vary.
Themes That Make The Lost Metal Land
Beyond plot twists and cameos, a few themes stand out.
Duty, Faith, And Limited Gods
Harmony remains one of the most intriguing figures in Mistborn. He is a god who is, in some ways, stuck. Two opposing powers. A world that keeps inventing new ways to blow itself up. Enemies who are happy to exploit his blind spots.
Wax’s relationship with Harmony is complicated. He has gratitude for the power and guidance he has received, anger about the cost of that guidance, and a very practical frustration with cryptic divine hints. The Lost Metal continues the conversation that Shadows of Self and The Bands of Mourning began, only now the stakes involve entire cities and possible invasions, not just one community or one faith group.
Who Gets To Be A Legend In Mistborn
One of my favorite undercurrents in Era 2 has been the way the original heroes of Mistborn show up as myths and religions. Vin and Elend are history. The Survivor is a symbol. Sazed is a god.
In The Lost Metal we see the early shape of how Wax, Wayne, Marasi, and Steris might one day be remembered. Statues, stories, and small details hint at the legends that future Mistborn eras will inherit. Special shoutout to Wayne’s statue, which is exactly as chaotic as he would want, even if he would pretend to hate it.
It is a neat mirror of Era 1. Back then, characters constantly underestimated the impact they would have. Here, our crew has grown up on the stories of those earlier heroes, and they are intensely aware of the weight on their shoulders, even while just trying to keep people alive.
Found Family, Grief, And Growing Past The Roughs
All four Wax and Wayne books, plus Secret History, wrestle with grief, guilt, and the question of whether you can ever really go home again. The Lost Metal does not shy away from that.
Wax continues to live with the losses that pushed him back to Elendel in the first place.
Wayne’s guilt finally reaches breaking point.
Marasi’s constant battle to do good inside imperfect systems hits a new stage.
Steris proves again that you do not need to be a chosen one or a magic user to be absolutely central.
The ending hurts. It should. Yet it also leaves the survivors with real futures and sets the stage for a third era of Mistborn that Sanderson has already talked about, moving Scadrial into a more modern, almost sci-fi age later on.
Who Should Read The Lost Metal Now, And Who Might Want To Wait
If You Are Here For Wax And Wayne First
If what you love about this series is the mix of gunfights, train heists, and sarcastic banter between a far too serious lawman and his VERY unpredictable best friend, you should absolutely keep going from The Bands of Mourning into Mistborn: Secret History and then The Lost Metal while everything is still fresh.
The tone is more serious. The jokes often land right next to genuine heartbreak. Yet the core of the series, that friendship and that found family, is still there.
If You Are A Cosmere Completionist
If you read every new Cosmere release as soon as it hits the shelves, you probably picked this one up years ago. If you somehow have not, consider this your reminder.
The Lost Metal is a key puzzle piece for the shared universe. It has major Ghostblood involvement, a full confrontation with Autonomy, and clear setup for later Mistborn eras and other Cosmere books. Several reading-order guides now treat it as one of the essential stepping stones for understanding the big picture.
If Era 1 Still Owns Your Heart
I sympathize. I still think about Vin and Kelsier at very random moments.
You might never love Wax and Wayne quite as much as you love the original crew, and that is fine. What Era 2 offers, though, is a more confident version of Sanderson’s style. The humor is sharper, the mysteries more layered, and the long-term plotting far more intertwined with the rest of his work.
If you want a bridge between your attachment to Era 1 and this very Cosmere-heavy finale, read or revisit my Mistborn: Secret History review, then step into The Lost Metal while that novella is still echoing in your head.
- Yes, right now if you have finished The Bands of Mourning and Mistborn: Secret History.
- Read Secret History first if you just closed Bands and are tempted to jump straight into The Lost Metal.
- Pause for Era 1 if you skipped the original trilogy and still want the full emotional weight behind Harmony, Kelsier, and the kandra.
Where To Go Next On His And Hers Book Club
If you are planning or in the middle of a Mistborn reading project, I have a small Wax and Wayne hub ready for you.
Start with The Alloy of Law to see how my opinion of Wax and Wayne began.
Move into Shadows of Self for murder, theology, and kandra trouble.
Then The Bands of Mourning, which acts as the springboard into this finale.
Pair all of that with Mistborn: Secret History, which might look like a side story on the surface but is anything but.
Together, those reviews form a little journey through Era 2, from shootouts in the Roughs to that last page of The Lost Metal and all the Cosmere chaos it implies.
I would also love to hear how you rank the four Wax and Wayne books and whether you ended up more on Team Wax or Team Wayne. I know where I stand.
FAQ – Wax And Wayne, The Lost Metal, And Mistborn Reading Order
Do I need to read Mistborn Era 1 before Wax and Wayne and The Lost Metal?
You can follow the basic plot of Wax and Wayne without reading Era 1, but you will miss a lot of emotional weight and context. Mistborn Era 1 establishes the original heroes, the rise of Harmony, and the origin of the kandra, all of which inform what is happening in The Lost Metal. For full impact, read the original trilogy first, or at least have a solid summary in mind.
Do I need to read Mistborn: Secret History before The Lost Metal?
If you care about understanding the larger story behind the plot, yes. Mistborn: Secret History explains what happened to Kelsier, how the powers behind Mistborn work, and why certain groups in The Lost Metal are so interested in Scadrial. Several reviewers and reading guides now treat Secret History as required material before this finale.
Does The Lost Metal spoil other Cosmere books?
It does not walk through the plots of other series, but it does reveal the identity of the leader of the Ghostbloods, which Stormlight readers would otherwise discover much later, and it confirms that certain worldhoppers are active on Scadrial. If you are very spoiler-averse about cross-series identities, you may want to catch up on at least the published Stormlight books first.
Is The Lost Metal more about Wax and Wayne or about the Cosmere?
It is both. The book finishes Wax and Wayne’s story, resolves the Set threat, and gives clear outcomes for Marasi and Steris. At the same time, the main villain force and several major allies come from outside Scadrial, and the final chapters clearly position the planet inside a broader interplanetary conflict. Your enjoyment will depend on how much you like that mix.
Is Wayne more than a comic relief character?
Yes. While he still plays the clown, The Lost Metal pulls his guilt, loyalty, and quiet heroism into the spotlight. His final decisions give new depth to many of his earlier antics and turn him into the emotional core of the finale. For me, he ended up outshining Wax as a character, which is not something I expected when I started The Alloy of Law.
Can I start Mistborn with The Lost Metal?
No. This is one of the worst starting points you could choose. The Lost Metal assumes you already know the magic, the history, the gods, and the main cast. Starting here would ruin key twists from six previous books and leave you confused about almost everything that matters.
Will there be more Mistborn after The Lost Metal?
Yes. The Lost Metal closes out Era 2, but Sanderson has already outlined a third Mistborn era that will push Scadrial into a more modern, even sci-fi adjacent age, planned to come after his novel version of White Sand.
I loved this finale. I loved the banter, I loved the way the plot sprawls out across the Cosmere, and I especially loved the way Wayne’s story lands. If The Alloy of Law felt like “fantasy with guns” and Shadows and Bands felt like clever, character-driven adventures, The Lost Metal feels like the moment Mistborn steps out under brighter lights and says, “All right, let’s do this.”
If you have finished it, tell me: are you Team Wax, Team Wayne, or still quietly pining for Era 1?
They Both Die at the End is a YA romance with a speculative twist: a service called Death-Cast warns people they will die within 24 hours, and two strangers choose to spend that final day together. It is tender, tense, and quietly brutal in the way only a clock-ticking story can be. First published in 2017 by HarperTeen, it remains one of Adam Silvera’s best-known novels.